News

Showing stories from August 2011

Chinese newspapers have been forced to ditch pages of reports, about the recent high speed train crash, at last minute after propaganda chiefs issue sudden order, despite premier's pledge of transparency

Leighton Contractors said Monday it had been selected by Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC) to deliver the final stage of the Southern Sydney Freight Line (SSFL) in an Alliance contract worth $150 million.

The Alliance will complete the construction of a 36km dedicated freight line between Macarthur and Sefton in southern Sydney. The SSFL will provide a third track in the rail corridor specifically for freight services, allowing passenger and freight services to operate independently.

Abu Dhabi: Etihad Rail, the master developer and operator of the UAE's national railway network, said yesterday it has selected Electro-Motive Diesel (EMD), one of the world's largest builders of diesel-electric locomotives, to design and manufacture seven heavy haul freight locomotives for delivery by 2012.

Etihad Rail didn't say what the size of the deal with EMD was and spokespersons at Etihad Rail and EMD were unavailable for comment when contacted by Gulf News.

Etihad Rail, however, said in a statement the locomotives contract was a "momentous milestone" for the Dh40 billion project.

RAIL commuters are using city trains as personal rubbish dumps, and passengers on the Cleveland line are among the worst offenders.

Queensland Rail said more than 6.5 tonnes of waste had been collected by Queensland Rail's new mobile cleaning crews last month. Chief executive officer Paul Scurrah said the 26 members of the new teams were travelling on afternoon services collecting rubbish left by morning peak commuters and lunchtime travellers.

A FEDERAL government report into high-speed rail along Australia's eastern seaboard has identified a route between Brisbane and Melbourne, via Sydney and Canberra, that would cost almost $100 billion.

Phase one of the report is due to be released by the federal Transport Minister, Anthony Albanese, at an infrastructure conference on Thursday. Briefings for MPs, transport bureaucrats and industry representatives will be held tomorrow.

PASSENGERS could pay less than $100 for a three-hour journey from Melbourne to Sydney using the federal government's proposed high-speed rail link along the east coast.

The first study of the link between Melbourne and Brisbane will be released today, putting the price tag at between $61 billion and $108 billion for the project.

The report puts non-stop travel times along the 1600-kilometre distance of the track at six hours - three hours from Melbourne to Sydney and three hours from Sydney to Brisbane - with speeds of up to 350 km/h.

The future of the Blayney to Demondrille rail line remains uncertain until the independent study into the viability of the line is released.
That was the message from a meeting between the mayors of the five councils pushing for the line to be reopened and the NSW opposition spokesperson for regional infrastructure Mick Veitch, and opposition transport spokesperson Penny Sharpe.

Blayney, Cowra, Young, Harden, and Weddin councils are currently reviewing Booz & Co consultants draft report before they submit it to the transport minister Gladys Berejiklian.

TONY EASTLEY: Train drivers are threatening not to work on Australia's busiest railway line between Sydney and Melbourne if safety conditions don't improve, but the boss of Australian Rail Track Corporation says he's investing millions of dollars in track maintenance and he's very confident the track is safe.

Last week a loaded passenger train in Victoria narrowly missed crashing into a maintenance crew when it travelled down a section of line that should have been closed.

ATLAS Iron is continuing its discussions with BHP Billiton about infrastructure solutions, as the expanding iron ore miner also starts to examine rail options for when it out-grows its road haulage method.

Atlas managing director, David Flanagan, said yesterday that discussions with global major BHP, which has aggressively fought against third-party access to its Pilbara infrastructure, were ongoing.

IT’S great to see so many “coming on board” to support our quest for the return of the passenger service to Mildura.
But why do some seem to be opposing us?

Please join those of us who have been fighting for the train’s return for more than five years.

The Mildura Passenger Train Action Group is not partisan, it is not even bi-partisan but is truly multi-partisan, representing all political persuasions and none – just those who want to have our train back, a service to get us to Melbourne at least as fast as a car, to start with.

The NSW Government is backing a proposed east coast high-speed rail connection, saying it would allow Canberra to become Sydney's second airport.
The Commonwealth Government is also talking up the potential of a 1600km link between Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney and Brisbane, but has admitted the price tag of $61billion to $108billion could be hard to justify given Australia's relatively small population.

Infrastructure Minister Anthony Albanese issued the first stage of an implementation study into the link yesterday, saying it was not a simple project and the Government did not want to gild the lily, but it "certainly thinks it's worth it".

CHINA'S deadliest high-speed train crash may hasten the break-up of a ministry that runs the world's second-largest rail network, employs more people than the US government and has debts larger than Denmark's economy.

Premier Wen Jiabao has pledged more focus on safety and greater accountability following the July 23 crash that killed 40 people, endangering the Ministry of Railways' dual grip on regulating and operating China's trains.

Dividing these roles may improve management, financial transparency and safety, said Hu Xingdou, an economics professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology. "The Rail Ministry has been run like an independent kingdom for years," he said.

WAGGA and Albury have been included in plans for a multibillion-dollar high-speed rail connecting Brisbane and Melbourne.

After speculation Wagga could miss out on the ambitious plan, reports released by the federal government yesterday outlined phase one plans for linking the eastern seaboard.

But despite the benefits that could come with being one of the stops along the route, scepticism remains in the Wagga business fraternity over the future of the project. Wagga Business Chamber president Julian McLaren yesterday said he was dubious of the scheme and labelled it a "Greens pipe dream".

The plan seems out of this world - at least, that is, if you live in Australia. A high-speed bullet train which could slash travel times and costs between major cities and dramatically change the way Australians do business and holiday.

The Federal Government has released the first stage of a feasibility study into a high-speed rail network which could link Brisbane, Newcastle, Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra by 2036.

Randwick mayor Murray Matson has taken aim at what he says is Labor Party inaction on light rail.

The motion that had the green mayor seeing red was one by Labor councillor Tony Bowen calling for the light rail network to be publicly owned and for safeguards against the loss of existing public transport services.

Cr Matson said he found Cr Bowen’s motion an unnecessary hindrance towards the achievement of light rail.

Openrails.org's goal is to enhance the railroad simulation hobby through a community designed and supported platform built to serve as a lasting foundation for an accurate and immersive simulation experience.

There were 124 sightings for this week. This is 14 sighting more than last week, making a total of 3262 sightings for this year to date. On day 218 last year we had recorded 3031 sightings. This is 231 sightings up on the same time last year.

BEIJING - Last month's fatal train crash has shaken the country, not only causing the loss of lives and delayed and unclear explanations, but also undermining people's confidence in the rail system.

Bai Ruoxue stands in line at the bus station of Fuzhou, capital city of eastern Fujian province, waiting to buy a ticket to her hometown of Zhaoan, in the southernmost part of the province. She decided to take the bus despite the fact that it takes three hours longer than the bullet train.

"I took train all the time in the past," said the 20-year-old college student. "I thought trains were safe and fast." But after the tragic train collision on July 23, Bai swore not to take bullet trains.

PEOPLE in Melbourne's west are the most unhappy rail passengers in the city, while those who live in the east are the most satisfied with how the network performs, confidential data shows.

Customer satisfaction surveys obtained by The Age under freedom of information laws reveal that for several years Sydenham line passengers have on average rated the network far worse than other passengers.

AN endangered moth and legless lizard could derail the proposed $108 billion high-speed rail link to Sydney and Brisbane.

The golden sun moth and the striped legless lizard live in sensitive Craigieburn grasslands.

The Federal Government's High Speed Rail Study has outlined the potential environmental damage of the favoured route, which cuts through the Chiltern-Mt Pilot and Kinglake national parks as well as state forests near Glenrowan and Springhurst.

METRO'S failure to satisfactorily maintain one of its trains and a railway power substation in Reservoir led to a fire igniting on the train as it pulled out of a Northcote railway station last year, a report by the state's rail safety investigator has found.

A lack of repair records for the train and extensive fire damage meant the investigation was unable to establish what had caused the blaze, chief investigator Ian McCallum found.

TENSIONS are emerging between the state government and Infrastructure NSW over the North West Rail Link.

Infrastructure NSW is concerned that neither a cost nor a route has been sorted out on the project, despite continuing press appearances by Premier Barry O'Farrell and Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian.

"They have got all these bloody press conferences (on the link and we don't know yet whether) this is $12 billion, $8 billion or $10 billion," one source said.

AFTER decades of talk, a high-speed rail (HSR) network for Australia is again up for discussion.

The Federal Government last week released the basics of a first-stage study into the feasibility of an HSR link along the east coast. The study is looking at potential routes from Brisbane to Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne, as well as the economic viability of such a network.

Auckland's transport authorities will aim to knock 20 to 30 minutes off rail journeys after passengers faced bottlenecks at Kingsland train station after Saturday's match.

Trains carried 16,500 fans to and from the test at Eden Park. While travel times from Britomart to Kingsland were exemplary before the match - around 20 minutes - some passengers had a long wait on the return trip.

MORNINGTON Peninsula Shire mayor Graham Pittock has welcomed a promise from the state government that a railway line to service the expanding Port of Hastings will not run through Baxter.

Ports Minister Denis Napthine said at a recent private meeting the government was working on plans to acquire land and develop a railway alongside the Western Port Highway to transport shipping containers between Hastings and Dandenong.

THE North West Rail link has been omitted from a 2011 national priority list, after Premier Barry O’Farrell failed to update a submission to Infrastructure Australia after the March state election.

Repeating the same processes for new governments in WA and Victoria, Infrastructure Australia wrote to the Premier giving the State Government a chance to update the NSW submission to Infrastructure Australia.

A NEW rail timetable introduced by Metro in May allows so much extra time for trains to run on schedule that drivers say they are waiting for up to three minutes at some railway stations before leaving.

Metro chief executive Andrew Lezala said last week that in July, the operator had achieved the best on-time running performance in five years.

More funds should be pumped into rail to generate a modal shift, according to a new report touting the benefits of rail.

Deloitte Access Economics’ The True Value of Rail report is urging greater investment in the north-south corridor connecting Brisbane to Melbourne via Sydney to increase rail’s share of the goods carried along the route.

The report, paid for by the Australasian Railway Association (ARA), says the corridor is beset by capacity constraints, particularly on the Sydney metropolitan section.

New York commuters inched homeward by bus, hitched rides with friends and waved down taxis Tuesday evening after a derailed train earlier in the day disrupted rail traffic across the Northeast.

The accident forced authorities to shut down one of the two rail tunnels used by Amtrak and New Jersey Transit trains between Manhattan and New Jersey. Both inbound and outbound trains were sharing the remaining tunnel.

THE man who will be responsible for Sydney's ticketing system, for making RailCorp lift its game, for talking figures with a private ferry operator, and for drawing up a new public transport timetable, first has to make sure the Rugby World Cup runs smoothly.

The NSW government has looked to New Zealand for answers to Sydney's transport woes, and will announce today the appointment of the chief operating officer of Auckland Transport, Fergus Gammie, as a key foot soldier in its attempt to reshape the bureaucracy.

LYNE MP Rob Oakeshott has welcomed a commitment from opposition communications and broadband spokesman Malcolm Turnbull not to destroy the National Broadband Network if the Coalition wins office.

"Mr Turnbull's promise not to remove NBN cables already in the ground is a sensible move that will be welcomed by many, including hospitals, universities and businesses in regional Australia," Mr Oakeshott, who is also chair of the Joint Standing Committee on the NBN, said.

China has suspended all new high-speed railway projects three weeks after the Wenzhou rail disaster that killed 40 people, raising serious questions over the safety of China's decade of super-charged railway expansion.

Excluding cars from the Australian Government’s proposed new carbon pricing defies logic, the head of Australia’s peak rail industry body says.
Australasian Railways Association chairman Lance Hockridge says the policy will deliver the perverse outcome of making passenger and freight rail more expensive than road, and encourage greater use of the less carbon-friendly mode.

‘‘The sensible approach would be to either abandon this expansion or provide the rail industry with a level playing field.’’

IN THE latest rail debacle involving interstate services, the carriages on yesterday's morning train to Sydney became separated from the engine car as it gathered speed on the outskirts of Melbourne.

About 9am, as it passed through the suburb of Coolaroo in Melbourne's north, the engine car on the morning's Melbourne-to-Sydney train detached from carriages carrying 142 passengers. No one was harmed in the incident, and both the engine car and the passenger carriages slowly ground to a halt after they became separated, due to a loss of power.

Hutchison Port Holdings (HPH) has been appointed as operator of the Enfield Intermodal Logistics Centre (ILC), which is located 18 km from Port Botany - where HPH also operates the new third container terminal.

According to Sydney Ports chairman Bryan Smith, the ILC would be a key element in a network of facilities across Sydney that will provide a more efficient means to transfer containers by train to and from Port Botany, and to allow the efficient repositioning by rail of empty containers for export from regional and rural New South Wales.

PLANS for a Brisbane-Sydney-Melbourne high-speed train hinge, more than anything, on one question: if you struggle to get Australians out of their cars and on to public transport, how are you going to get them out of their aeroplanes?

It's not just the cost. Australians simply don't do long-distance rail travel; in fact, only about 3 per cent of long-distance journeys take place on a train. Getting your interstate travellers down to the railway station will require a significant cultural shift.

A $250 million rail link to a near-deserted Avalon airport will be built ahead of one to Melbourne Airport, a senior government minister confirmed yesterday.

Melbourne Airport is the nation's second busiest, handling about 28 million passengers on 200,000 thousand flights a year, while Avalon sees six Jetstar flights a day now that Tiger has pulled out from operating there.

WAY across the paddocks, when we were children, steel tracks ran, and on still nights the drawn-out howl of a train was the sound of yesterday and tomorrow: the coming from somewhere and the going to somewhere else that so infected the imagination of country kids.

There were 134 sightings for this week. This is ten sighting more than last week, making a total of 3396 sightings for this year to date. On day 225 last year we had recorded 3136 sightings. This is 260 sightings up on the same time last year.

THE Hong Kong-based operator behind Metro has reported a $A7 million pre-tax profit increase from running Melbourne's trains in the first half of this year.

Hong Kong's MTR is majority shareholder in Metro Trains Melbourne.

In a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange on Friday, MTR said Melbourne earnings before tax and other expenses for the first six months of 2011 were $HK263 million ($A33.7 million), up from HK$209 million for the same period in 2010.

SYDNEY — French companies are keen to build a high-speed rail network in Australia, France's Transport Minister Thierry Mariani said, despite the prospect still being in the early stages.

The idea of a very fast train system linking the major cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra has been debated for years, but gained momentum last year after the government announced a study into a network.

Aston Resources said Tuesday that it has secured 2 million mt/year of rail haulage capacity from the second quarter of 2013 and ramping up to 5 million mt/year by Q3 2013 for its Maules Creek metallurgical coal project the Gunnedah coal field in New South Wales, Australia.

Securing the rail haulage capacity from Australian Rail Track Corp for its potential exports "has further de-risked the infrastructure requirements for the delivery of first coal," Aston Resources CEO Todd Hannigan said in a statement.

Queensland Rail has revealed plans to outsource its entire IT infrastructure and support desk to a single managed service by the end of September next year.

The state government department, which split from the privatised freight arm QR National under a $4.6 billion float last year, would retain responsibility for ICT strategy as well as support for some Microsoft Exchange instances, network services and the end-user computing environment.

THERE is something perverse about giving priority to a rail link to Avalon Airport over Melbourne Airport. One offers a handful of domestic flights a day, carrying 1.5 million passengers a year.
The other is an international gateway, with 200,000 flights a year carrying a fast-growing total of 28 million passengers. Avalon is 56 kilometres from central Melbourne but readily accessible by road. Melbourne airport is closer but the 22-kilometre trip - by car, bus or taxi - is an unpredictable nightmare.

Yet the state government is moving first on Avalon. ''There are challenges around an airport link for Melbourne,'' said Aviation Minister Gordon Rich-Phillips.

EMBATTLED miner Murchison Metals has won approval from Western Australia's Environmental Protection Authority for the $3.7 billion expansion of its half-owned Jack Hills iron ore project in the state's Mid-West region.

The move could boost the sale process for Murchison's assets.

Potential buyers have been running the numbers in a data room since the miner's admission last month that it was unable to fund its share of the Jack Hills expansion or the $5.94bn Oakajee port and rail project.

CANADIAN asset manager Brookfield has unveiled plans for a huge expansion in the capacity of Western Australia's key rail network as it strives to meet soaring demand from the state's growing number of resources projects.

The company also announced yesterday it would rebadge its WestNet Rail business as Brookfield Rail.

Brookfield Rail owns 5000km of track which supports more than 270,000 train movements across the southern half of WA. It also moves 80 per cent of all general freight from the east coast.

TENSE negotiations between the NSW state government and Reliance Rail, the troubled public-private partnership delivering the Waratah train into Sydney's rail network, have been pitched into confusion after the project's guarantors claimed Reliance had defaulted on their intricate funding agreement.

Reliance and its major equity partner, trainbuilder Downer EDI, immediately downplayed the seriousness and disputed the claim, received in the form of a ''reservation of rights'' notice from its credit insurers, Syncora and FGIC UK, on Tuesday afternoon.

TRAIN drivers must be an integral part of any inquiry into the failings of the Sydney to Melbourne rail line, says the NSW rail union boss.
Yesterday Bob Hayden and the train drivers applauded federal Transport Minister Anthony Albanese for finally calling a wide-ranging inquiry into mudhole-plagued track.

They say the decision clears them of “whinger” and “trouble maker” tags and justifies their ongoing concerns.

A busy passenger and freight rail line was shut down for nearly five hours on Thursday after police investigating the death of a woman struck by a train in Seattle said they found a possible explosive near the tracks.

INDIAN energy giant Adani Enterprises has moved foreign investment in Australia to a new level, with a $10 billion scheme to control every stage of its booming coal export business from mine to port.

In his first major interview, the chief executive of Adani's Australian operations, Jignesh Derasari, declared the company wanted to control "whatever component the coal touches", including a $3bn railway network to haul coal from the emergent Galilee Basin in central Queensland to two ports, one of which it purchased this year and the other which it will build at Dudgeon Point near Mackay.

THE RailCorp transit officers who patrol Sydney's trains have a ''poisonous'' relationship with their management and many stick in the job only because of the relatively high pay.

An external review of the officers finds morale is ''either low or at best ambivalent'', amid complaints of malicious management, unfit workmates and inadequate security equipment.

The review was commissioned by RailCorp in response to union concerns about safety. But its final report, obtained by the Herald, goes further than its terms of reference to expose a troubled work culture and recommends RailCorp turn over responsibility for managing officers to a senior police figure.

ON Marcel Hall's Galilee Basin cotton and cattle property, Queensland's summer of horror rain has led to its most fertile year in decades, with cows fatter than he's ever seen and a bumper $5 million cotton crop.

But the 57-year-old, whose family has farmed on some of Australia's best cattle-fattening country north of Clermont in central Queensland since halfway through last century, fears it could be one of the property's last.

THE north-west rail link could be opened with eight stations instead of the proposed six.

The team in charge has raised plans with local businesses and council that include building a second station at Norwest and another station beyond Rouse Hill, but scrapping a proposed station at Burns Road, Kellyville.

The Burns Road station would be replaced by a station further north at Samantha Riley Drive.

ADELAIDE'S train operators were liable for the severing of a drunken passenger's leg, a court has found.
Dennis Martin was thrown off the train in 2001 for travelling without a ticket and fighting ticket inspectors. But he tried to reboard as the train left Bowden station.
He grabbed a door but tripped over his feet and fell between the train and platform. His injuries were so serious a leg had to be amputated.

There were 132 sightings for this week. This is two sighting less than last week, making a total of 3528 sightings for this year to date. On day 232 last year we had recorded 3234 sightings. This is 294 sightings up on the same time last year.

The rail network operator in the Northern Territory says Top End drivers are notoriously dangerous at railway crossings.
There are 220 railway crossings on about 1,700 kilometres of railway track in the Territory.
There have been eight serious accidents between trains and vehicles in the past seven years.
Genesee and Wyoming Darwin coordinator Brett Kimpton says most crossings do not have lights and bells.

KARACHI: THE cash-strapped Pakistan Railways, severely hit by depleting assets and services, has developed a new business plan to revive its freight service with the support of private and public firms.

The plan is based on an agreement with the NLC, three major terminal operators at Karachi Port, Daudkhel Cement and a multi-national oil company who will provide Rs2 billion for rehabilitating 20 diesel locomotives at the Railways establishments at Rawalpindi, Lahore and Karachi. The proposal is now awaiting approval of the ministry of railways.

A FREQUENT Dandenong railway station user believes it's the perfect time to establish a friends group to lobby for improvements.
In the Weekly last Monday, Greater Dandenong mayor Roz Blades spoke of her campaign to "clean up" the station.

Last week she met representatives of Victoria Police, the transit police, the Department of Transport, council staff, VicUrban and Metro on site to discuss ways to improve the station.

National Rail Safety Week for 2011 has been launched, with the annual event bringing together organisations to educate the community about rail safety.

The initiative will run until August 28, with more than 20 Australian and New Zealand organisations working together to raise awareness on acting safely around trains.

The 2011 event will focus on level crossing safety and trespass, and the Australasian Railway Association (ARA) says the aim is to remind motorists, pedestrians, and cyclists to take extra care around railways and always practice safe behaviour.

THE William Street footbridge to the Perth Train Station will be closed from Wednesday as part of the works to sink the Fremantle Line and link Perth’s CBD with Northbridge.

The western concourse will be closed at the Roe Street end but the Wellington Street entry will remain open.

Part of the footbridge will be removed next month.

Commuters will be able to take three alternative routes around the train station: the eastern concourse from Forrest Chase across to the Perth Cultural Centre, the Horseshoe Bridge, and the Milligan Street railway foot bridge.

NEW direct buses to Sydney Airport should be introduced and the $11.80 access fee for the airport rail link scrapped, according to a scathing report into traffic congestion by the Productivity Commission.

A toll could also be placed on the M5 to reduce traffic in and around the airport.

In a draft report into economic regulation of airports released yesterday, the commission called for the O'Farrell government to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of abolishing the access charge on rail ticket prices to the airport.

A PACKAGE that contained a bomb threat found on a train near Riverstone station today was a hoax, police have said.
Traffic was blocked near the station for about 2.5 hours and police and emergency services diverted substantial resources, including the bomb squad, ambulances and state rail staff to the police operation.

ONESTEEL'S $200 million committment to expand its Whyalla port and nearly double iron mining will save hundreds of jobs.

The company said yesterday it would buy an iron project near Coober Pedy - the Peculiar Knob mine which was approved for construction by the State Government only last month - as well as other iron assets owned by WPG Resources.

The move was a strategic decision to harness the growth of iron exports, OneSteel managing director Geoff Plummer said. "This is an opportunity to do that," he said.

Russia has unveiled an ambitious plan to build the world’s longest tunnel under the Bering Strait as part of a transport corridor linking Europe and America via Siberia and Alaska.

The planned tunnel is 103km long and will connect 3/4 of the northern hemisphere together in a single rail system - effectively allowing you to take a train trip from London to New York. However, the goal appears to be not driven by passenger journeys, but linking the vast Siberian resources to North America.

Minister for Public Transport Terry Mulder said today that he had resolved a longstanding annoyance for rail passengers using Ararat and Maryborough line trains with V/Line now agreeing to allow travellers to remain on board at Ballarat while train sets were coupled together or divided.

RAIL and ports operator Asciano has returned a full-year profit for the first time in three years and suggested a speculated split off its ports and rail businesses was unlikely in the near term.

The company today reported net profit of $145.2 million for the year ended June 30, following a $788.5m loss the previous year. The company was hit by poor weather during the southern wet season and industrial action at its Patrick ports business, but posted a significant improvement in earnings after recording a $1.1 billion one-time accounting charge in 2010.

Asciano, the largest hauler of coal into Newcastle port, the world's largest coal export harbour by volumes, said revenue in the period was $3.06bn, up 7.2 per cent from $2.85bn the previous year.

The transport department says while plans are afoot to ensure a significant shift of the movement of freight from road to rail, any restructuring of current rail operations is a policy consideration that will be dealt with by the Cabinet.

The department's statement followed Transnet's announcement that while it welcomed an open debate on the potential separation of its rail operations and infrastructure, the idea would cause panic to investors from whom it had borrowed money for an investment plan for the next five years.

ASCIANO'S decision to retain its business structure after a six-month strategic review is expected to overshadow its solid profit result in investor roadshow discussions that kick off today.

Chief executive John Mullen defended the decision to pursue organic growth options and plans to further integrate the three divisions ahead of any sale or demerger of its ports business, which had been widely speculated about in the market.

A prominent railway consultant has broken his silence over the poor state of Australia's busiest railway line.

In a move that surprised most rail industry insiders, Federal Transport Minister Anthony Albanese last week announced a second inquiry within six months into the state of the country's busiest rail line linking Melbourne and Sydney.

The line has been plagued with mud holes, which critics of its operator, the Australian Rail Track Corporation, say have been caused by a bungled billion-dollar re-sleepering program.

There were 114 sightings for this week. This is 18 sighting less than last week, making a total of 3642 sightings for this year to date. On day 239 last year we had recorded 3339 sightings. This is 303 sightings up on the same time last year.

SYDNEY commuters have long railed against late running trains, but now their biggest complaint is how CityRail staff look and act.
Figures obtained by The Sun-Herald show that Central, Town Hall, Parramatta, Wynyard and Strathfield received the most complaints in the past year. And at each of these stations, the most number of complaints were about ''staff behaviour and presentation''.

NEW YORK, Aug 28 (Reuters) - New York City's mass transit system remained shut down on Sunday afternoon even after Hurricane Irene had roared through, and there was no immediate word on when services would resume. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Sunday that Monday's morning commute will be "tough".

TWEED MP Geoff Provest has insisted a $1 million study into rail feasibility for the Tweed will go ahead despite a Tweed Shire Council report announcing bus travel as the best public transport option.

The council's Public Transport Strategy investi- gated various forms of pub- lic transport – heavy rail, light rail and buses – to determine the best options for the future of public transport on the Tweed.

THE rail freight company QR National has adopted a cautious approach to the financial year as coal-haulage volumes are yet to recover from the impact of the Queensland floods.

Announcing its maiden full-year result since it was privatised last November, QR National also indicated it was likely to make further redundancies later this year despite already laying off 660 workers.

The coal-hauler reported a net profit from continuing operations of $350 million for the year to June, compared with a $222 million loss a year earlier.

HIS transient lifestyle drove him to find somewhere warm and safe on freezing winter nights, and this homeless man found solace in the railway system.

He is believed to have become accustomed to travelling the northern line between Central and Newcastle train stations, especially at night, knowing that terminations at either end meant he would never be more than three hours from home.

THE South Morang rail extension project is months ahead of schedule and residents are looking forward to an early completion date.
The Epping line will soon extend into the thriving northern suburbs, however Mernda residents are still campaigning for a further extension beyond South Morang.

The South Morang and Mernda Rail Alliance members, who have campaigned for more rail infrastructure, hope the extension eases traffic in Plenty Road because more people will be able to catch a train to work.

Cash from the resources boom should be used to build a $100 billion rail link between Brisbane and Melbourne, federal Greens leader Bob Brown says.

When a feasibility study was published by the federal government early this month, Infrastructure Minister Anthony Albanese said the plan to link the cities was worth the significant expense and would also cut carbon emissions.

On Tuesday, Senator Brown said funding for the rail link should be drawn from the resources industry, with private enterprise playing a role.